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The archbishop rose from his chair, resumed his mitre, and took the crozier from the hands of an attendant.

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'My dear brethren,' said he, addressing the assembly, there is no necessity for our examining and interrogating Madamoiselle de Lenoncour on the sincerity of her religious vocation. There is a canonical impediment to her professing for the present; and, as to the future, we reserve to ourselves the consideration of the matter: interdicting to all other ecclesiastical persons the power of accepting her vows, under penalty of interdiction, of suspension, and of nullification; all which is in virtue of our metropolitan rights, contained in the terms of the bull cum proximis:' 'Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini!' pursued he, chanting in a grave and solemn voice, and turning toward the altar to give the benediction of the holy sacrament. The noble auditory had that habitude of reserve, that empire, or rather tyranny, over all outward manifestations of internal emotions, which belongs to high aristocratical breeding. The declaration of the archbishop, therefore, was received as one of the most natural and ordinary things in the world, and all knelt down and received the pontifical benediction with perfect decorum. As soon, however, as they were released from the self-restraint imposed by etiquette, they amply indemnified themselves; and nothing was talked of for a month, in the fashionable saloons of Paris, but the loves of the handsome Viscount and the charming Henrietta; the wickedness of the canoness; the active benevolence and admirable address of the Princess de Beauvau; and the great wisdom of the archbishop; who was particularly extolled for his delicacy in defeating this manœuvre without any scandal to the aristocracy, or public stigma on the name of De Rupelmonde, and without any departure from pastoral gentleness, by adroitly seizing upon an informality, and turning it to beneficial account, with as much authority as charitable circumspection.

As to the Canoness de Rupelmonde, she was defeated at all points in her wicked plans against her beautiful niece. In consequence of the caveat of the archbishop, her superior ecclesiastic, the Abbess de Panthemont, formally forbade Madamoiselle de Lenoncour to resume the white veil and the dress of a noviciate, and instead of a novice's cell, established her in a beautiful apartment as a boarder. The next morning the Canoness de Rupelmonde called at the convent to take away her niece; but, to her confusion, the Abbess produced a lettre-de-cachet, which she had just received, and which forbade Madamoiselle to leave the convent with any other person save the Prince de Beauvau.

Under the auspices and the vigilant attention of the prince, the whole affair was wound up in the most technical and circumstantial manner. The Countess de Rupelmonde, by a decree of the Grand Council, was divested of the guardianship of her niece. All the arrears of revenues, accumulated during Madamoiselle de Lenoncour's minority, were rigorously collected, the accounts scrutinized and adjusted, and her noble fortune placed safely and entirely in her hands.

In a little while the noble personages who had been invited to the ceremony of taking the veil, received another invitation, on the part of the Countess dowager de Gondrecourt, and the Marshal Prince de

Beauvau, to attend the marriage of Adrien de Gondrecourt, Viscount of Jean-sur-Moselle, and Henrietta de Lenoncour, Countess de Hevouwal,' etc., which duly took place in the chapel of the archepiscopal palace at Paris.

SO MUCH for the beautiful Henrietta de Lenoncour. We will now draw forth a companion picture of a handsome young cavalier, who figured in the gay world of Paris about the same time, and concerning whom the ancient Marchioness writes with the lingering feeling of youthful romance.

THE CHARMING LETORIERES.

'A GOOD face is a letter of recommendation,' says an old proverb; and it was never more verified than in the case of the Chevalier Letoriéres. He was a young gentleman of good family, but who, ⚫ according to the Spanish phrase, had nothing but his cloak and sword, (capa y espada) that is to say, his gentle blood and gallant bearing, to help him forward in the world. Through the interest of an uncle, who was an abbé, he received a gratuitous education at a fashionable college, but finding the terms of study too long, and the vacations too short, for his gay and indolent temper, he left college without saying a word, and launched himself upon Paris, with a light heart and still lighter pocket. Here he led a life to his humor. It is true, he had to make scanty meals, and to lodge in a garret; but what of that? He was his own master; free from all task or restraint. When cold or hungry, he sallied forth, like others of the chamelion order, and banqueted on pure air and warm sunshine in the public walks and gardens; drove off the thoughts of a dinner, by amusing himself with the gay and grotesque throngs of the metropolis; and if one of the poorest, was one of the merriest gentlemen upon town. Wherever he went, his good looks, and frank, graceful demeanor, had an instant and magical effect in securing favor. There was but one word to express his fascinating powers; he was 'charming.'

Instances are given of the effect of his winning qualities upon minds of coarse, ordinary mould. He had once taken shelter from a heavy shower under a gate-way. A hackney coachman, who was passing by, pulled up, and asked him if he wished a cast in his carriage. Letoriéres declined, with a melancholy and dubious shake of the head. The coachman regarded him wistfully, repeated his solicitations, and wished to know what place he was going to. To the Palace of Justice, to walk in the galleries; but I will wait here until the rain is over.'

And why so?' inquired the coachman, pertinaciously. 'Because I've no money; do let me be quiet.'

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The coachman jumped down, and opening the door of his carriage, 'It shall never be said,' cried he, that I left so charming a young gentleman to weary himself, and catch cold, merely for the sake of twenty-four sous.'

Arrived at the Palace of Justice, he stopped before the saloon of a famous restaurateur, opened the door of the carriage, and taking off his hat very respectfully, begged the youth to accept of a Louis

d'or. 'You will meet with some young gentlemen within,' said he, 'with whom you may wish to take a hand at cards. The number of my coach is 144. You can find me out, and repay me whenever you please.'

The worthy Jehu was some years afterward made coachman to the Princess Sophia, of France, through the recommendation of the handsome youth he had so generously obliged.

Another instance in point is given with respect to his tailor, to whom he owed four hundred livres. The tailor had repeatedly dunned him, but was always put off with the best grace in the world. The wife of the tailor urged her husband to assume a harsher tone. He replied that he could not find it in his heart to speak roughly to so charming a young gentleman.

'I've no patience with such want of spirit!' cried the wife; 'you have not the courage to show your teeth: but I'm going out to get change for this note of a hundred crowns; before I come home, I'll seek this charming' youth myself, and see whether he has the power to charm me. I'll warrant he won't be able to put me off with fine looks and fine speeches.'

With these and many more vaunts, the good dame sallied forth. When she returned home, however, she wore quite a different aspect. 'Well,' said her husband, 'how much have you received from the 'charming young man?'

'Let me alone!' replied the wife: 'I found him playing on the guitar, and he locked so handsome, and was so amiable and genteel, that I had not the heart to trouble him.'

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'And the change for the hundred crown note?' said the tailor. The wife hesitated a moment: 'Faith,' cried she, 'you'll have to add the amount to your next bill against him. The poor young gentleman had such a melancholy air, that I know not how it was, but I left the hundred crowns on his mantle-piece in spite of him!' The captivating looks and manners of Letoriéres made his way with equal facility in the great world. His high connexions entitled him to presentation at court, but some questions arose about the sufficiency of his proofs of nobility; whereupon the king, who had seen him walking in the gardens of Versailles, and been charmed with his appearance, put an end to all demurs of etiquette, by making him a Viscount.

The same kind of fascination is said to have attended him throughout his career. He succeeded in various difficult family suits on questions of honors and privileges; he had merely to appear in court, to dispose the judges in his favor. He at length became so popular, that on one occasion, when he appeared at the theatre on recovering from a wound received in a duel, the audience applauded him on his entrance. Nothing, it is said, could have been in more perfect good taste and high breeding, than his conduct on this occasion. When he heard the applause, he rose in his box, stepped forward, and surveyed both sides of the house, as if he could not believe that it was himself they were treating like a favorite actor, or a prince of the blood.

His success with the fair sex may easily be presumed; but he had too much honor and sensibility to render his intercourse with them a

series of cold gallantries and heartless triumphs. In the course of his attendance upon court, where he held a post of honor about the king, he fell deeply in love with the beautiful Princess Julia, of Savoy Carignan. She was young, tender, and simple-hearted, and returned his love with equal fervor. Her family took the alarm at this attachment, and procured an order that she should inhabit the Abbey of Montmartre, where she was treated with all befitting delicacy and distinction, but not permitted to go beyond the convent walls. The lovers found means to correspond. One of their letters was intercepted, and it is even hinted that a plan of elopement was discovered. A duel was the consequence, with one of the fiery relations of the princess. Letoriéres received two sword-thrusts in his right side. His wounds were serious, yet after two or three days' confinement, he could not resist his impatience to see the princess. He succeeded in scaling the walls of the abbey, and obtaining an interview in an arcade leading to the cloister of the cemetery. The interview of the lovers was long and tender. They exchanged vows of eternal fidelity, and flattered themselves with hopes of future happiness, which they were never to realize. After repeated farewells, the princess reentered the convent, never again to behold the charming Letoriéres. On the following morning, his corpse was found stiff and cold on the pavement of the cloister!

It would seem that the wounds of the unfortunate youth had been reopened by his efforts to get over the wall; that he had refrained from calling assistance, lest he should expose the princess, and that he had bled to death, without any one to aid him, or to close his dying eyes.

WITH these romances of real life, drawn from what profess to be authentic memoirs, and characteristic of aristocratical French life, during the early part of the last century, I shall for the present, Mr. Editor, take my leave. Yours, etc.,

G. C.

CLEANLINESS.

'Cleanliness is Godliness.'- FULLER.

PERFUMES more sweet from many a flower exhale,
And gaudier colors many a blossom bears,
Than hover round the lily of the vale-

Than the pale violet of the meadow wears:

Yet, culled from all the daughters of the field,
With this thy chesnut locks thou lov'st to deck;
Preferred o'er all the lavish gardens yield,
That rests upon the ivory of thy neck

These simple flowers what secret charm endears?
Ah, if it be so pure, so neat, they seem,

Bathed in the dew of Morning's costliest tears,

Or tinged with Evening's last declining beam;

So may'st thou emulate their virgin art,
Please every eye, and live in every heart.

LITERARY NOTICES.

NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY: OR, A DESCRIPTION OF THE REPTILES INHABITING THE UNITED STATES. BY JOHN EDWARDS HOLBROOK, M. D., Professor of Anatomy in the Medical College of South Carolina; Member of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and of the New-York and Baltimore Lyceums of Natural History. In two vols. 4to. pp. 245. Philadelphia: J. DOBSON.

WHY should Doctor JOHN EDWARDS HOLBROOK - than whom, considering the years which have as yet traced their pathway across his brow, no member of the learned and well-fed profession to which he is so honorably attached, has had better opportunity of becoming versed in the refined and occult enjoyments of the table-why should he → how could he have passed over, with a dry and sterile notice of cold approbation, and of 'faint praise,' the delightful, the luminous attributes of the incomparable Esculent, to which, in its varieties, so many of the pages of his beautiful and scientific work have been devoted?

We advert not to his lizards; and with the entire race of the Colubri are irreconcileably at war: nor would we dwell in admiration even upon his frogs; those that are potted by CAMUS of Rochelle, and that have graced our markets in admirable abundance and condition during the last two years, being, we apprehend, less agile in their vaulting ambition than their enterprising brethren of this migratory country, are distinguished by a certain redundancy and delicacy in the parts, that ours can never hope to possess, until less than at present given to frolicksome exercise, and to the idle love of change and novelty of place. It is on Thee that our thoughts rest in golden light, Emys Reticu lata! - Emys Mobilensis! - Testudo Terrapin, Emys Terrapin! Quocunque nomine gaudes; ubicumque sis invenienda! Under what designation soever thou mayest be classed; in whatever order of being ranked; in whatsoever quarter of our happy land thou mayest have been found, or style of cookery served; in china, on delf, on silver; come to us at supper as a stew; or descend to our ravished sight at dinner upon some raw and gusty day, in the noblest fashion of a soup; disguise thyself as thou wilt; wear but a cookery that may deserve the name; and the table exists not, that thou wilt not embellish and adorn with incontestable supremacy of good!

Alas! that in the impartial, the stern justice that must ever distinguish the station of authority that we hold, it should belong to us to qualify praise that comes from the cockles of a heart too lately warmed by the genial influences of such delicious recreation, to admit a single thought of disfavor that is not warranted by truth; but O, entire genus of Testudo and of Emys!-vast and increasing host of countless tribes of the Testudines-by whose timid eyes, and cautiously-emerging heads, and variegated necks, we perceive our editorial throne at this moment to be surrounded in myriads on our call—it is to your fair sex that we would almost exclusively apply these laudatory words; their eggs, their livers, and their captivating limbs, deserve indeed to be chanted in songs of triumph, by the voice of woman! But your males-it is our sense of duty that extracts from us the painful declaration - unless in extreme youth, are hard, impracticable, tough, and desperately dry; in this respect resembling too closely the moral and the

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